Films this week 12/13 to 12/19/2024
by Gary Palmucci | 13th December 2024 | Gary's Corner, Uncategorized
The two additions to New Plaza Cinema’s abbreviated weekend schedule (we’re closed on Friday night for CUNY holiday events) are both NY Times Critic’s Picks.
The Latvian animated film Flow (repping that country in this year’s international-film Oscar competition) continues our occasional looks at work in that genre from around the globe – Robot Dreams, Aurora’s Sunrise, Memoir of a Snail…in this family-friendly feature, we follow a lovable cat, a dog and a capybara (aka a rodent) fleeing the aftermath of a flood of biblical proportions. Without a word of dialogue, this unlikely trio finds a route to survival. NYT reviewer Calum Marsh wrote:
“It sounds saccharine, but the filmmakers largely avoid the sort of whimsy and sentimentality that might plague, say, a Disney movie with the same premise. The animals act like real animals, not like cartoons or humans, and that restraint gives their adventure an authenticity that, in moments of both delight and peril, makes the emotion that much more powerful.”
On a very different note, writer-director Paul Schrader was one of the first filmmakers to appear at a New Plaza Q&A, way back in 2018. In his latest film Oh, Canada, adapted from a Russell Banks novel- the writer’s earlier Affliction was the source of one of Schrader’s best pictures- a terminally-ill documentarian (Richard Gere) tries to square accounts in his life as it starts to slip away. The NYT’s Alissa Wilkinson observed:
“The themes running through much of Schrader’s work, especially lately, revolve around redemption — the messiness of it, the possibility of it, the impossibility of it. The man who wrote Taxi Driver has, in his 70s, given us First Reformed and Master Gardener (both of which we screened), movies about solitary men wrestling with the task of living in a world that humanity has wrecked, and the dread of discovering oneself personally unforgivable for one’s place in it.”
Gere and Schrader collaborated memorably some decades ago in American Gigolo, bringing another frame of reference to an already-compelling drama, with its stellar supporting cast including Jacob Elordi, Uma Thurman and NPC friend Michael Imperioli. Screening just once, on Saturday, this will definitely encore next weekend.
Our holdovers include Saoirse Ronan in Steve McQueen’s Blitz, the mournful political-foment doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, which has sold out each of its shows here to date (you’ve been advised) and our long-running, 80s downtown-art-scene chronicle Make Me Famous, whose tickets are also selling briskly. Its hard-working producer-director team, Brian Vincent and Heather Spore,will join us after Sunday’s 5 pm show for a Q&A. They are already well into shooting their next doc, on James Dean- an icon who’s ripe for a 21 st century re-examination.
On Sunday December 29, Brian- along with film historian Foster Hirsch and Nikki Ray, daughter of legendary director Nicholas Ray- will join us after a screening of the latter’s 1955 classic Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.
This will be just one of several vintage titles we’ll be offering during seventeen continuous days of operation, from December 20 through January 5, including Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant in Charade, Hepburn and Tracy in their underrated, NYC/Christmas-situated Desk Set, and Ingmar Bergman’s full-length Fanny and Alexander.
There’ll also be several current features and documentaries in the mix, climaxing with a run of the new, epic French rendition of The Count of Monte Cristo – whose trailer we’ve been running non-stop – starting on January 2.